Sea Surface full of Clouds

"Sea Surface full of Clouds" is a poem from the second, 1931,edition of Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry,"Harmonium." It was firstpublished in 1924, so it is restricted by copyright. However, briefparts of it are quoted here as , and the whole poem is available elsewhereon the Internet. [http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/5316/]

Overview

Section III, quoted here, figures in Joan Richardson's reading of "SeaSurface" as having Stevens's sexuality as its "true subject". Theprelude describes ("most hermitically") the period preceding sexualclimax. The reference to a piano is explained by the fact that hismother and his wife, Elsie, played the piano. "For him, the piano andother keyboard instruments are always attached to something magicalconnected with the idea of beauty and the allure of the female, as,for example, in "Peter Quince at the Clavier," Richardson writes, "Accordingly, the machine of ocean, his projection, is now `tranced,'carried away by the rapture of the `uncertain green... as a preludeholds and holds." [Richardson, p. 64]

Richardson continues:

He imaginatively records both his sensations and those of hiswife. The female is felt by him as "silver petals of white blooms/Unfolding in the water," and he, in his maleness, is "feeling sure/ ofthe milk within the saltiest spurge." He goes on to express thefeelings of both of them throughout this section and in part of thenext. The climax itself is described as, "The sea unfolding in thesunken clouds/ "Oh!" [marking the surprise of the moment of climax] "C'étais mon extase et mon amour"." [Richardson, p. 64]

Richardson explicitly invokes Stevens's distinction between the truesubject of a poem and the poetry of the subject, in order to justify areading that dwells on what she takes to be the true subject. She writes,

In closing, I offer the following observations taken from "TheIrrational Element in Poetry:" "One is always writing about two thingsat the same time in poetry and it is this that produces the tensioncharacteristic of poetry. One is the true subject and the other is thepoetry of the subject. The difficulty of sticking to the true subject,when it is the poetry of the subject that is paramount in one's mind,need only be mentioned to be understood."

Buttel does not draw the distinction, but he implicitly focuses on thepoetry of the subject, the "Poetry of sky and sea" in the concludingtwo stanzas, discussing not deep psychology but rather the syntacticaland semantic features of Stevens's style.

The verse moves fluently from line to line, and the variationsintensify the exultation in the open-air vividness and splendor ofthe seascape and skyscape....the combination of accents andalliteration in "clouds came clustering," with "came" in this contextpicking up a stress, heightens the impressiveness and drama producedby the image of the "sovereign" cloud masses "clustering" -- just theright word in meaning and sound -- into transitory form. The metricalregularity of the following sentence, abetted by the repetition ofsound in "conch" and "conjuration," contributes to the majesticauthority of the note sounded by Triton. The suspended moment ofturning is caught in the hovering emphasis on "green blooms turning,"even though the long spondee adds an extra accent to the line; andthis prepares for the immense satisfactionn of "clearingopalescence" -- the jewel-like irridescence dissolving into aninstant of transfiguring clarity. Such effects lead up to thetriumphant finality of the concluding line, where the partial stresson "Came" and the accents on the syllables beginning with fheighten the finality. The series of unstressed syllables in thepenultimate foot not only increases the force of "freshest" but alsohelps to convey the ongoing quality of the transfigurations which arenot static, even at the moment when poetic insight draws heaven andsea into a unity. [Buttel, pp. 217-8]

Buttel's foregrounding of Stevens's craftsmanship, especially withreference to syntactic and semantic innovation, is also the approachfavored by Helen Vendler and those inspired by her scholarship.

It can't be denied that each approach -- Richardson's true-subjectreading and Buttel's poetry-of-the-subject interpretation -- bringswith it some insight into the poem. One might venture that the twoapproaches are in principle individually necessary and jointlysufficient for full understanding. The ideal joint accountwould not necessarily sign off on every detail of any given individualaccount, and the two approaches might have different weight for differentpoems. For instance, relatively little weight might attach to the "truesubject" of The Revolutionists stop for Orangeade because of its devotion to light-hearted word play. In a poem like this, the poetry of the subject seems to be most of the story.

Notes

References

• Buttel, Robert. "Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium". 1967: Princeton University Press
• Richardson, Joan. "A Reading of `Sea Surface Full of Clouds". "Wallace Stevens Journal" Fall 1982.